A Disguise to Die For (22 page)

“May I help you?” she asked with no apparent recognition.

“Mrs. Cannon, I'm Margo Tamblyn. We met at your son's memorial service.”

“The costume woman,” she said.

“Yes, that's right.”

She glanced at my T-shirt. “Won't you come in?” she asked, indicating a path behind her.

“Thank you.” I entered the grand foyer and glanced up. The chandelier that hung over my head must have been at least twelve feet in the air. For a paranoid second I feared her hospitality was motivated by an elaborate plan to have the chandelier fall on my head, eliminating me from her life. I shook off the thought. It had been too long since my last therapy session.

“May I offer you something? Tea? Water? Wine?”

“No thank you,” I said. “I came here to talk to you.”

She picked up a glass filled with ice and took a sip, leaving a faint smudge of coral lipstick on the rim. “I'm afraid I may have been rude to you at the memorial,” she said. “My husband thought it would be a good idea to throw a public memorial for our son, to help me grieve. At the time I agreed with him, but perhaps there are things that should be kept in the family.”

“Mrs. Cannon, I understand that you were upset. I may have been a little upset myself. My father is hospitalized with his second heart attack in two weeks.”

“That must be hard on your family,” she said.

“My father is my family. My father and Ebony Welles.”

“She's not your mother!” she proclaimed.

“She's the closest thing I have to one. My real mother died when I was born,” I explained. “Ebony became friends with my dad when I was five. She was the most consistent female role model I had.” Linda Cannon looked away. “I don't know
what I would have done without her,” I continued. “She taught me to be strong, honest, and hardworking. She's the person I turned to when I couldn't talk to my dad. And now—”

Linda set the glass down. “You seem like a fine woman, but I'll credit your father with your upbringing, not Ms. Welles. She has been nothing but trouble for this family since I first knew her. And after my late husband's generosity, what she did to my son . . . I just can't forgive her. I cannot.”

“Ebony is innocent,” I said quietly. “She didn't hurt Blitz.”

“Margo, your loyalty is misplaced. Ebony Welles blackmailed my late husband, killed my son, and robbed my house. Now, I've been hospitable and invited you into my home, but if you are going to insist on defending that woman, then I must ask you to leave.”

I stood up. “How can you convict a person without proof?” I asked.

She stood up with me. “The police have all the proof they need. Ask yourself: who was standing over my son's body with a knife in her hand?”

“That wasn't the knife that killed Blitz. The police know that.”

Black Jack stepped into the room and put a consoling arm around his wife. “Margo, we can both understand that it's hard for you to accept what happened, but there's just too much evidence pointing to Ebony for us to ignore it. Maybe we could if she hadn't been linked to the robbery, but now”—he shrugged—“there's just no denying it.”

“The robbery?” I asked. “What about Amy Bradshaw?”

“She's the one who put two and two together for the police,” Linda said. “She found my engagement ring at a local pawnshop. She even spent her own money to buy it, the poor thing. It was awfully brave of her to come forward like she did, but she knew it was the right thing to do.”

“When did this happen?” I asked. The information didn't fit together the way it should.

“Amy came to us yesterday,” Black Jack said. “Once we spoke to the police, they tracked down the pawnbroker. He made the ID. Ebony Welles was the woman who pawned my wife's jewelry.”

EBONY COULD NOT
have been the person to bring in Linda Cannon's jewelry. The robbery had taken place on Monday night and Ebony had been—Ebony had been missing all day. Before I tried to defend her, I needed to know where she'd gone.

I quickly assessed that it would do more harm than good to admit that I didn't know Ebony's alibi for the day of the robbery. What I did know was that Amy Bradshaw had been wearing that engagement ring on Sunday morning, a full day before the Cannon house was broken into. Maybe she hadn't expected me to notice, but I did. I'd even commented on it. And what had happened days later when I mentioned the engagement? Denial. Which meant one thing: she knew the presence of that ring on her finger on Sunday morning was going to create problems for her.

There was nothing more to be gained from an afternoon at Linda and Black Jack's house, so I made as polite an exit
as I could under the circumstances. Across the street, Grady's silver sports car sat in the driveway. He would have easily seen my scooter when he parked his car. A friendly hello might have been in order, but all I wanted was to get out of Christopher Robin Crossing and find out what was going on.

It was after five. I hadn't eaten since my smoothie that morning and I was hungry. And I had to go to the bathroom. Not the best combination when driving a scooter over a road with potholes and ruts. Main Line Road was backed up with cars, and I'd never been the type of scooter driver who was comfortable easing my way up the aisle between two lanes of traffic. On the right, I saw the glowing sign for Hoshiyama Steak House. As soon as I got close enough, I pulled off and parked in the back.

Truth be told, it wasn't just the possibility of a bathroom that led me there, or the fact that Tak had asked me to stop by. My mind was a loop of problems with no solutions, and the best way think outside of the box was to get outside of the box. In short, I needed unfamiliar surroundings to shake me out of what I already knew.

I'd been a fan of teppanyaki restaurants since my sixth grade graduation. Dad, Ebony, and I had driven into Las Vegas for the day. He'd promised that I could pick any restaurant I wanted for dinner. After a day spent wandering around the strip, I think he expected me to choose McDonald's or Burger King, but I didn't. I spotted an old wooden building with a low gabled roof.
MORI'S RESTAURANT
read the sign over the door. A pretty lady in a pink satin kimono opened the front door and looked out. Her black hair was pulled back in a bun that was secured with sticks. She smiled at us. I thought she was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. My dad must have noticed, because he asked if I wanted to eat there.

“That's a restaurant?” I had asked.

“Yes. They make the food in front of you like a show,” he said.

Ebony clinched the deal. “I love their fried rice. Let's go!”

They were right. I loved every aspect of it, from the outfits on the serving staff to the volcano that the chef made out of a sliced onion. After I moved to Las Vegas, I'd treated myself to lunch at Mori's every year on my birthday, even when the cost of the meal could buy my groceries for two weeks.

Tak's truck wasn't in the lot. I approached the door to the restaurant and prepared myself for the experience of dining alone. The table, I knew, would accommodate eight people. Me being a party of one, I'd be slotted into an empty seat at a table of strangers. I didn't mind—I never had. Sometimes sitting with strangers felt more comfortable than trying to force conversation with people I already knew. I ducked into the restroom out front and then approached the hostess station.

A woman greeted me. She had long, straight, brown hair streaked with gray, and was dressed in a green linen dress that ended just above her ankles. Tasteful flat brown sandals were on her feet. She wore very little makeup and her natural attractiveness shone through. Despite the creases by her eyes and laugh lines by her mouth, there was a youthfulness about her that kept me from pinpointing her age.

“How many?” she asked.

“One.”

“Name?” She bent over the seating chart with a pen.

“Margo. Margo Tamblyn,” I said.

She looked up quickly and smiled. “Follow me,” she said.

She led me to a back table with three couples. Two empty chairs sat along the side of the table. I thanked her and sat in the chair to the right, leaving an empty chair between me and the couple to my left. Some people preferred their privacy,
even in such a festive location. I scanned the menu, looking for my usual—sesame chicken—and cringed when someone sat in the chair next to me. I focused on the menu even though I already knew what I was ordering.

Dining alone in Japanese steak houses had become a way for me to practice being myself among strangers. Odd as it seemed, I was comforted by the anonymity of the people around me. But tonight, I couldn't stop thinking about the accusations against Ebony. I picked at my salad, rolling the single grape tomato around the bowl with my chopsticks, while the chef sliced and diced our food. He finished the whole presentation before I was done with my soup.

A woman in a kimono stepped up to my left. She held a black and red laminate tray. One by one she picked up my plate, my salad, my bowl of fried rice, and my glass of water.

“I'm not done,” I said.

She nodded. “We have a better room for you,” she said. “Come with me.”

Three conversations stopped. Six pair of eyes watched me stand up and follow the woman to the side of the room. She went behind a large screen and I followed. I hadn't known there were private rooms in the back until she slid a wood-and-muslin panel to the left and exposed a low table flanked by even lower seats. She set the tray on the table and bowed slightly. I reciprocated. Moments after she left, Tak appeared in the doorway.

“Mind some company?” he asked. “Don't be mad,” he said quickly. “My mom told me you were eating alone. If you want to be alone, I'll get out of here.”

“Your mom?”

“The lady who took your name at the door.”

“How'd she know who I was?”

“I may have mentioned your name around the house,” he
said. He picked up the menu and studied the entrees with phony concentration.

I set my menu down and folded my hands in front of me. “I'm a big teppanyaki fan, so if you need me to recommend something, just let me know,” I said. He set down his menu and shook his head.

“I mean it. You didn't ask for me when you came in, so if you prefer to eat alone, I'll leave.”

I turned to face him and felt the weight of worry surround me like a giant, waterlogged teddy bear costume. I put my hand on his upper arm. “Stay,” I said.

He put his hand on top of mine. “Okay.”

We sat on opposite sides of the table. A man poked his head into the room. “I'll have what she's having,” Tak said. The man looked at my plate and disappeared.

“Do you want to talk about Ebony?”

I set my chopsticks down. “She didn't do it. Any of it. I don't know why someone is out to get her and make it look like she did, but I'm going to—” I stopped abruptly. I still didn't know how much I could trust Tak. If he was here to pump me for information for the detective, I wasn't going to deliver.

“Remember how I told you that I was on leave from my job in the DA's office?” he asked. “That was only partially true. It's true that I'm on leave. The part that I left out was that it wasn't entirely my choice.”

Tak took a drink of his water. “I became friends with one of the prosecutors. We both put in long hours and sometimes ran into each other after work. He had some structural issues with his house and asked me to come over and take a look. When I got there, he introduced me to his girlfriend. She was a county judge.”

“They're hardly the first two people who met in a work environment and started a relationship,” I said.

“In most companies, interoffice relationships are frowned upon. In the DA's office, that issue is magnified. Hal asked me not to say anything. Susan was up for pension in a few months and she was planning on leaving the bench after that.

“A couple of weeks later I heard a rumor that a judge was showing favoritism to one of the county prosecutors. That judge was Susan. When I asked Hal about it, he said opposing counsel was spreading the rumor so the case they were working on would be tossed.”

“Sounds like a dirty tactic,” I said.

“Maybe it was. Or maybe there was some truth to it. I don't know. The case was thrown out and a suspected murderer went free.” He looked down at his plate and spun his chopstick around with his fingers. “Detective Nichols was the arresting officer. It was pretty bad when she heard the news and worse when she found out I knew about Hal and Susan's relationship.”

He didn't say if he and Detective Nichols were still a couple then, but I put two and two together and assumed this was the catalyst for their split.

“Did Detective Nichols have something to do with you being put on leave?”

He looked up at me. His brows pulled together over dark brown eyes that looked troubled. I reached across the table and put my hand on top of his—the one not playing with the chopstick.

“I'm not the guy who runs to the principal and rats on the cheater. I'm the guy who works hard to get ahead. I mind my own business and I expect everybody else to do their job too. I don't know if the rumors were true. I don't know if opposing
counsel manipulated things. I don't even know if Susan really was up for pension or if she and Hal discussed the case or if the suspected murderer was guilty. My job in the district attorney's office was to plan the expansion of Clark County, and I ended up learning something that I had no business knowing. Lives were changed because of that. My supervisor found out that I was friends with Hal and Susan. I was suspended pending review. And here we are.”

“You didn't tell your parents the truth, did you?”

“No. I can't shame them. My dad thinks I wanted to quit. That's bad enough.”

“What does your mom think?”

“My mom knows something about the job is troubling me. She doesn't know what it is and she respects my privacy. Since I came here, she's said that it's more important for me to be happy and live a life I can be proud of than it is to suffer under someone else's rules.”

“Why did you tell me the truth?”

“This is going to sound pretty selfish, but I needed to tell someone. It's like it was building up inside of me and I was going to burst. Ever feel that way?”

Again with the mind reading.

Tak set down his chopsticks and turned to me. “Margo, there's something about you that's different from the people I worked with. They work hard to get ahead, sometimes sacrificing their personal lives for opportunities. Those people will start rumors to undermine a defender's case or get a judge pulled from the bench. They care about winning more than they care about the truth. But you—you're driven to find the truth no matter what it takes. You've got this spirit about you, this sense of loyalty to Ebony that I don't see every day. You believe in Ebony's innocence so strongly that I want to believe it too.”

“That's because I know Ebony is innocent. She didn't kill Blitz Manners.”

“But what if she did?” he asked.

“She didn't.”

“It's that clear-cut to you, isn't it?”

I nodded. “Think of it in math terms. Imagine someone told you that the Pythagorean theorem was wrong. That C squared didn't equal A squared plus B squared. And they try to show you evidence to support their argument, but you know there's no way their evidence can be right, because you
know
the Pythagorean theorem is a fact. Do you see what I'm saying?”

“I think so.”

“Tak, it's pretty simple for me. I know Ebony didn't do it. So somebody else did. I don't know who or why, but I know they did. And now people are making up evidence against her and it's making things worse.”

“Tell me about this evidence.”

“Amy Bradshaw came to Disguise DeLimit on Sunday morning and she was wearing a giant diamond ring. She made it sound like she and Blitz were engaged. Today I learned that she told Black Jack and Linda Cannon that she recognized the ring when she saw it in a pawnshop and bought it so she could return it to Blitz's mom. There's something wrong with that, but I can't figure out what.”

“Why does it feel wrong? Talk me through it.”

I leaned back and looked at him. “You really want to help me figure this out?”

“It might do us both some good to try.”

Maybe it was the admission of what had really happened with his job in the district attorney's office or maybe it was the fact that he'd sensed how out of place me and my thoughts were in the middle of his father's restaurant, but I
forgot about my trust issues and used him as a sounding board.